A/N: Okay, this is my first fanfiction, and I'm mostly posting it in the hopes that it'll get a bit of critique. This is set in what I like to call the 'Naruto-beat-the-sense-back-into-Sasuke-at-the-valley-of-the-end-and-hauled-his-sorry-behind-back-to-Konoha' universe. They're about fourteen or fifteen in this. They're in Suna on a diplomatic mission. Gaara is not Kazekage yet.
Suna is a very hot place.
This should not be surprising. After all, it's Suna. It's a desert, for crying out loud. But, somehow, the fact that Suna is a very hot place had, apparently, never occurred to Naruto. Ever. Which was probably why Sasuke was stuck with listening to the usuratonkachi whine about the heat.
It would not have been so terrible if only there was somebody else. Both Sakura and Kakashi had managed to disappear whilst Sasuke's back was turned. Normally, he would not have missed the pink-haired kunoichi and the jounin, but trying to keep Naruto from wreaking utter havoc was not as easy as it sounded. Normally, he would have let his teammate do whatever, but they were in Suna. The village that Konoha had barely managed to secure a tenuous peace with, which had become even more tenuous since last year and the Orochimaru Incident, which Sasuke did not feel guilty about. Really. And he didn't have nightmares about it, honest. He just decided that there were better ways of avenging his family than being Orochimaru's pawn, that's all.
Anyway.
He'd been able to ignore Naruto for the past ten minutes, since he'd gone completely silent while staring at a glass bottle and making his 'thinking face', which made Sasuke want to hit him. Suddenly, the blond jumped to his feet, clapping his hands together. This did not startle Sasuke. Really. I'm not lying.
"Glass is made of sand!" Sasuke blinked. Of all the idiotic things Naruto might say, that was the one he least expected. "So what?"
"Gaara controls sand!"
"…"
"Glass cuts better than sand!" And then it hit him. Sasuke's eyes widened a fraction. The idea was so brilliant, so blatantly obvious, that he was shocked that he'd never thought of it before. Naruto was literally bouncing up and down at this point.
"Come on, teme! Let's go find Gaara!"
"Hn."
After a good hour and a half of frantic searching, they did indeed find Gaara. He appeared to be pensively contemplating a group of children playing near a swing set who were growing increasingly unnerved by his scrutiny. The youngest one never did fully recover from the trauma of being stared at by Gaara, and had nightmares for the rest of his life.
Anyway.
Gaara's psychological abuse of young children was rudely interrupted by the hyperactive blond invading his personal space bubble. Predictably, Sasuke was trailing behind him. There was a fair amount of respect between the redhead and the Uchiha, mostly because they were Cool Brooding Emo Boys Forced To Deal With A Blond Uncool Non-Emo Boy For Some Obscure Reason Relating To Friendship, CBEBFTDWABUNEBFSORRTF for short.
"Gaara! We had to find you cause we were on this diplomacy mission and Sakura-chan and Kakashi-sensei left and I had an idea and we thought you could use it!"
"…"
"You control sand and glass is made of sand! And broken glass cuts really well!"
"…"
Sasuke sighed. On the inside, of course, where no one could see it. "There's more blood that way."
"…" A slightly demented gleam entered Gaara's eye. Naruto gulped. Sasuke wasn't at all nervous about what they'd just gotten themselves into, not at all…
When Naruto and Sasuke, blood-spattered and traumatized, but uninjured, returned to the gates of the village, Kakashi and Sakura were waiting for them. Sakura gasped at all the blood.
"What happened, Sasuke-kun? Are you okay? You're all covered in blood!"
"Hn."
"Sakura-chan! Where'd you go before? You and Kakashi-sensei just disappeared…"
"Well, there was this stall selling glass figurines and there was this one piece-"
The two boys took one look at the glass dove in her hands and ran like hell.
It all worked out well in the end.
Gaara had a new instrument of torture.
Shukaku approved.
Kakashi went to see the new Icha Icha Paradise movie twelve times.
Sakura gave the glass dove to her mother as a present.
Naruto and Sasuke agreed to never, ever speak of the Suna Incident again.